I gather that they all want to come to his house in an incredibly cool location, but I’m not placing it; the Pleiades? And I don’t get the mouseover reference.
“Ingress” is a game I’ve never heard of, where playing involves standing with your phone in a specific place, I guess.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/120312-ingress-264737.html
I’m with you. All I found out by googling is that Ingress is a recently released video game. And not being a video gamer, I accept that jokes based on this subject will usually go over my head.
“Ingress” is a game created by Google that combines elements of a traditional game along with GPS tracking of where the individual is. So you have to physically go certain places to accomplish things, which is why these people want to go where they went. I’m not sure if there is as much fighting as the last panel implies, but it would be cool if there were.
Useful link: Explain xkcd wiki (and here’s a direct link to this comic’s entry for people browsing at a later date).
I was stumped until I logged onto the xkcd forums.
Apparently Ingress is some Google Android game that involves finding ‘exotic matter’ in certain real-world locations. So the three pushy peeps are Ingress players who’ve found several deposits of game XM on the other guy’s lawn; they’re going to use their phones to collect it when they come over for the visit.
And apparently I get no XM of my own. 
Too slow.
That sounds…pretty damn cool. I read a William Gibson novel a few years ago (don’t remember the name) that revolved around a similar kind of real-world interaction with virtual-world information overlays, and, well, here it is in the future.
The future is more evenly distributed everyday.
Sounds like “Halting State” by Charles Stross.
I’m imagining two muggers sitting in a dark alley, talking about why they think people with smartphones keep showing up.
So basically it’s geocaching, but 1% more interesting?
Odd they’d use the name (more or less) of a well known classic relational database program.
Far more profitable, when the next phase I expect goes into effect. In Phase II, Google sells XM and event locations to businesses for advertising purposes. Want to draw a bunch of people with enough money for smartphones to your business on opening day? Pay Google to put a large XM source at your store’s coordinates. Players within your store’s locus will drop by to harvest it, see your store, and maybe come inside to check it out. Even if they don’t, the extra traffic will make you look busy, which can attract further attention. It’s like have a loss-leader, without the loss.
I pitched this idea a year or two ago, but I don’t have enough evil marketeer in me to push it.
“Zero History” is the one you’re thinking of.
Aside from “Halting State” by Stross, there’s also “This is Not a Game” by Walter Jon Williams.
Can we name them Estragon and Vladimir?
Waiting for GoDaddy
Also Daemon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez.
Here’s the official Ingress web site
And here’s the viral site that goes with it
Here’s the basic setup blurb
The initial portals were libraries, post offices, historical markers and the like, but Google is allowing people to submit new sites for portals.
Basically a clever way for Google to collect map data for walking routes, as I understand it.
On thinking about it, it’s even better than that. Not only are you attracting large numbers of people to the vicinity of your store, you’re attracting large numbers of smartphone users to the vicinity of your store. Which is to say, people with disposable income.